A Quick Look At The Complaints Against Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov, and Phillipos

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts has just filed two criminal complaints arising from the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. One complaint is against two men, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov. The other complaint is against one man, Robel Phillipos.

Documents are already available on PACER.

The current docket (the record of court actions in the case, with links to documents) is here in the case against Kadybayev and Tazhayakov. The complaint cover sheet against them is here. The affidavit in support of the complaint against them — which has an FBI agent's statement of the evidence supplying probable cause — is here.

The docket in the case against Pillipos is here. The complaint against him is here. The affidavit — which appears at a brief glance to be the same one from the case against the other two men – is here.

Read the affidavit yourself. Very briefly, the affidavit alleges that Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov saw emptied-out fireworks in accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's room, concluded that he was one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and decided to dispose of the container of hollowed-out fireworks, apparently to protect Tsarnaev. Phillipos, the FBI alleges, gave multiple statements and initially lied about what he knew of actions by Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov.

2. Why did they charge Phillipos separately? It's too early to say. They may be cutting him out from the other two to testify against them, they may be avoiding "misjoinder" (putting together different charges and defendants that don't belong together) even though it's premature to worry about that before the indictment, or there may be some other strategic reason.

3. Remember how I said earlier today that you should shut up rather than talk to the feds, because you'll just wind up (1) confessing, (2) making a stupid false statement that will make you look guilty, or (3) make a stupid false statement that will get you charged with making a stupid false statement? Yeah. This is what I was talking about.

And in your previous post, you point out the danger of saying ANYTHING to the feds – if one's statement is not consistent with what they believe to be the truth, you will be charged with the felony of lying to federal agents. Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby are prime examples.

I love it when I'm catching up on Popehat posts and I get to the bottom of one, and see in the "Most Recent" list that a new one has been posted while I was reading. Dang, it's like Christmas – which I, despite my Mormon non-trinitarianism, celebrate along with Patrick and 273 million other Americans. :)

> Now all it will take is a Prenda Lunacy Update, and this day will be complete…

I just checked recap, but all I see are the statements saying they join Paul Duffy in complaining about the propriety of admitting evidence that makes them look like weasel crap. Am I the only one who pictures those "I'm with stupid" t-shirts when they read all those statements where all they do is say that they join Duffy in making the same arguments?

Wow, it's a fucking avalanche of lone wolves these days! It's pretty crazy coincidence that a suspected bomber heads "home" to an area ridden with terrorist training camps for six months. Then you've got extra people handling the explosives, others running cleanup. I tell ya, these folks have some sort of cleaning fetish. Really shocking how well all these disparate people managed to have a hand in a bombing without any organization. I mean, that's better coordination than you get from most branches of government. Perhaps there's some sort of overmind, probably conservative republican, controlling all these random acts.